


away so long

by biblionerd07



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Getting Back Together, Isolation, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 06:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18114866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: Bucky wants peace. Steve wants Bucky to have peace. But there’s only one way to guarantee that, and Steve’s fine with doing that for Bucky.  The problem is, there's only so long he can be a one-man wrecking crew, wandering around alone, and he's not sure what else he can do.





	away so long

**Author's Note:**

> This... _could_ be Infinity War compliant? I think we're all operating under the assumption that Steve has been back to Wakanda before the big showdown in IW so this could be an explanation for that. I started writing this right after Civil War and gave up on it but recently was looking through my unfinished works and finished this one off. I don't remember if we know how much time passes between Civil War and Infinity War and tbh I don't really care if my timeline is wrong lol. (They disregard timelines in canon all they want so I will too!) This is almost a character study but not quite, and is basically just Steve being angsty and dramatic and Bucky reminding Steve he's a person, too.

Steve watches the brown hills pass outside the window. They have their own kind of beauty, really, but people don’t see because they aren’t green and covered in blooming flowers. There can be beauty in dust and death.

His head aches. He’s sick with exhaustion. He isn’t sure when he last slept more than two hours. He hardly knows what he’s chasing anymore. HYDRA’s all but gone, underground and latent, so deep even Natasha can’t find them. Or maybe she just stopped telling him where they are. He can’t fight the U.N., not really, and Tony’s not really looking for him anymore.

He wanders from city to city, country to country, searching for anyone who’s ever heard of the Winter Soldier. He eradicates any cockroaches he finds, and then he moves on. He hasn’t been in Wakanda in eight months, since Shuri brought Bucky out of cryo and pulled the triggers out of his head, since Bucky said, _I don’t do that anymore_ , since Bucky said, _I want to start over_ , since Bucky said, _I want peace_ , since Bucky said, _I can’t go with you._

Bucky wants peace. Steve wants Bucky to have peace. But there’s only one way to guarantee that, and Steve’s fine with doing that for Bucky. Bucky’s done plenty for him. There’s a sick satisfaction in the violence that Steve hasn’t felt often. It would scare him if he let himself think about it. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe that’s what he’s afraid of. Maybe that’s the feeling lurking just around the corner of his eye.

Steve’s phone buzzes. He ignores it until it buzzes again. There’s only one person who bothers sending a second text when the first goes unanswered these days. He opens the phone—a phone deemed _ancient_ after a decade, a flip phone burner that made Sam laugh and then shake his head and look sad when Steve told him it would do everything he needed it for, including being untraceable.

_Where are you today_

_Steve_

Steve swallows past the lump in his throat and snaps a photo of the brown grass rolling by the window. It won’t actually tell Bucky where he is, but it’ll be answer enough. He gets a picture in return of a potted plant in a windowsill. The flowers are yellow and pink and so cheerful Steve flinches. There’s a smiley face painted on the side of the pot in orange paint. One end of the mouth is longer than the other, so it’s a lopsided smile. Bucky used to draw his self-portraits that way, back when he followed Steve to an art class here or there and didn’t care if everyone laughed at his attempts.

Steve’s throat aches. His eyes burn. He leans his head against the window of the train and closes his eyes. He imagines Bucky’s face, frowning as he chooses the best angle for the photo, and wonders if Bucky shaved off the beard he’d been growing eight months ago. He thinks of the little dog with oversized paws and wonders if she’s grown into them by now. He thinks of Sam and T’Challa playing a weird game they call Cats and Birds were they chase each other through the jungle and wonders if Sam had found a better hiding spot after T’Challa discovered his last one. He wonders if Sam’s started letting himself be caught or if T'Challa's stopped pretending he's letting Sam get away.

_I’m going to plant tomatoes to go with my basil and rosemary._

Steve turns off his phone before the inevitable question can come, but it doesn’t matter; when he turns it back on three hours later, in a filthy hostel with water that runs brown before it goes clear, the message is sitting on the phone, waiting.

_When are you coming back?_

He doesn’t answer, and Bucky doesn’t say anything until the next day, and the record starts over.

He had spent six weeks in Wakanda with Sam and Wanda and Natasha. They were all on the run from multiple governments, for violating the Accords and for breaking out of a secret high-security prison, and for a while it was nice to eat new fruits he’d never heard of, listen to the rain falling down in gallons, hear the birds and the monkeys screaming at each other. Steve had never stayed anywhere tropical for longer than a few days, and he got used to the way breathing felt more like sucking in water and the heavy smell of flowers in the wind.

He’d visited the room with Bucky’s chamber in it every day. It had been an awful kind of torment, seeing Bucky’s still face like that. But unlike the pictures in Bucky’s file, there’s no frost around his face. He just looks like he’s asleep, really. He wasn’t frowning. His face was just blank. The aftermath of their fight with Tony was all healed.

Shuri had seen him down there a lot. She had assistants who monitored Bucky’s day-to-day vitals, but she spent a lot of time working on research to remove the triggers from his brain. Steve wasn’t sure what exactly she was doing; to him, it mostly looked like she was just staring at Bucky and the various screens showing data from the wires attached to him and tapping things into her little tablet computer. Steve wanted to watch what she was doing, just in case. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her, specifically. He just wasn’t sure he’d ever trust anyone to be alone with a vulnerable Bucky ever again, not if he could do something about it.

“You can speak to him,” she’d told him once. “He’ll hear. He probably won’t speak back, though.” She’d laughed. “If he does, please tell me right away.”

Steve didn’t laugh. He just stared at her. “What am I supposed to say?” He’d asked.

She looked surprised. “Whatever you want.”

Steve had laughed hollowly. “Whatever I want,” he echoed under his breath. “Yeah. Okay.”

Shuri had raised her eyebrows. “Okay,” she’d said. “Don’t talk to him, then. I don’t really care what you do, but I thought it might make you happier instead of bringing down the mood in the whole lab.”

“It’s a lab,” Steve had said. “How high can the mood really be?”

“Try making a joke and find out.” She’d shrugged at him and walked off.

Steve had stared at Bucky for a minute, then glanced over both shoulders. “Hey, Buck,” he’d started softly. “Um…Shuri says you can probably hear me. Remember all those times I was sick and you'd talk to me even when I was sort of half-dead? I heard most of that, I think. I don’t really know what to say. I guess, uh…” He’d lapsed into silence, staring at Bucky’s face. When they were younger, Steve would wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, body aching and keeping him from sleep, and watch Bucky’s chest rise and fall. He was breathing in the cryochamber, but so lightly Steve could hardly see it.

Steve had thought…well, when he’d found Bucky, he thought Bucky was going to come home with him. When he thought he’d have a home to go back to, that is. And when he’d realized he couldn’t go back, he’d just assumed Bucky would come on the run with him. They’d fight side-by-side just like they always did. He thought he’d finally gotten Bucky back, just like all those nights he lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wishing for that very thing. But Bucky didn’t want to come home with him, and Bucky didn’t want to go on the run with him, and Bucky didn’t want to fight. Bucky didn’t trust himself, and he didn’t trust Steve to take care of him. Bucky wanted to be put back to sleep.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Steve muttered. “This is stupid.” He’d rubbed his eyes, but then he’d stopped himself from leaving. Was he really going to just leave Bucky in there? All alone?

Steve swallowed hard. He’d already left Bucky alone and frozen before. If Steve had gone after Bucky, had looked for him, everything would have been different. With Bucky at his side, Steve wouldn’t have had to put the Valkyrie in the water. He could’ve made sure HYDRA didn’t take over SHIELD. He could’ve had a life. Maybe he’d be dead by now.

Most importantly, Bucky would’ve been okay. Bucky would’ve been safe. Bucky wouldn’t be so hurt he chose being frozen over living his life. Maybe Bucky wouldn’t have anything to blame him for.

“I’m sorry,” Steve had murmured. “I should have found you. This is all my fault. I missed you so much, Buck, and I wanted you to come back, but this…this isn’t what I wanted.” Bucky didn’t move. He stayed pale and unmoving. His eyes weren’t moving behind his eyelids at all, so maybe he wasn’t dreaming. Steve decided that was probably a good thing. He bit his lip and checked around again.

“I love you,” he’d whispered.

To this day, weeks and months after waking up, Bucky hasn’t given any indication he heard, and Steve hasn't brought it up again.

 

The intel’s bad. Steve’s bad. Something’s bad. He doesn’t get hurt. He gets there and there’s…nothing. The building is there. There’s no one to fight, nothing to burn, no action to take. Somehow it’s worse. He would’ve preferred a battle, maybe a stab wound that he would feel burn and itch and stretch as the muscle and skin and sinew grow back. He feels hollow and cold even though the summer air is hot and sweat is rolling down his back. He doesn’t have any next moves. This was just about the last hotspot the intel showed. He doesn’t know what to do with himself now.

He rides a train back to his hostel and there’s a teenage couple in his compartment, a boy and a girl who can’t see anything else but each other and are lost to the world and its injustices. Steve’s stomach hurts, watching them from the corners of his eyes.

He watches the boy tuck a strand of hair behind the girl’s ear and he watches the soft smile in the girl’s eyes as she speaks quietly to the boy and he thinks of two boys shyly hiding from the world and he turns to face the window and closes his eyes and doesn’t think anything for the rest of the trip.

But it replays in his mind all night, and when he wakes up alone in the middle of the night he sits up in the bed and he swallows down the numbness in his chest and he opens his phone and pushes the button he hadn’t let himself push even once in eight months.

“You alright?” Bucky doesn’t bother with a greeting or pleasantries; they’d passed that kind of thing two or nine decades ago, depending on your timeline, and Steve has to close his eyes again and fight the hitch in his breath. It’s such a familiar question, a question lobbed across decades and countries and minor aches and major wounds.

“No,” he says, ragged, because it doesn’t matter if he tries to lie. Bucky would know. Bucky breathes out harshly.

“Are you injured?” He clarifies, because he knows they’re two different questions.

“No.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything else, and Steve sits there with his head in on hand while the other cradles the phone to his ear, eyes closed while he listens to Bucky breathing. It’s a comforting sound. It always has been. The comfort is distant now, a drop in the ocean of Steve’s empty chest, but at least it’s there.

“Come back,” Bucky finally says. It isn’t a whisper and it isn’t an order but it isn’t really a question, either. He’s been asking for eight months and asking’s gotten him nowhere. He’s done tiptoeing around Steve, it seems. “Steve, come back.”

“Okay,” Steve says.

“Okay?” Bucky checks.

“Okay,” Steve repeats.

They’re both quiet for a minute. “Is it raining there?” Bucky asks quietly. “It’s raining here. T’Challa says it’s going to rain for days.”

“No,” Steve says. Bucky doesn’t even know where he is. Or maybe he does, but he’s pretending he doesn’t out of courtesy for Steve’s pride. “It hasn’t rained in months.”

Bucky hums a little. “I like the rain,” he offers. “Helps my tomatoes grow.”

Steve doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he doesn’t. But the next day he gets on the train and he goes to some secret airstrip and gets on some secret plane T’Challa sent for him, and Bucky is waiting when he lands.

“Hi,” Bucky says.

“Hi,” Steve answers. He feels, absurdly, a little shy. He hasn’t felt shy with Bucky since…ever, probably.

“Good flight?” Bucky asks.

Steve feels wrong-footed and tongue-tied. He’s never made small talk with Bucky before. There’s an awkwardness between them that makes him regret coming back. He shrugs. He’s already forgotten Bucky’s question. There’s a lump in his throat that won’t go away.

Bucky leads him away from the palace, through the thick undergrowth and out into the open fields. There’s a hut, down at the edge of the pasture where the goats graze. Some of the goats bleat out at Bucky, and he calls to them by name. The little puppy has grown, but his paws are still a bit too big for his body. He’ll grow more yet. He runs out to greet Bucky, licking his one hand lovingly and then walking at Bucky’s side. Bucky rests his hand on the dog’s head while he walks.

He leads Steve around the hut to the back. There are neat rows of tomatoes growing, and the bright flowers Steve remembers from the pictures. He wonders what happened to the cheerful orange pot. His eyes are suddenly stinging for no reason.

“Can I stay?” He blurts. “For a while.”

Bucky doesn’t miss a beat, though an easy “Yeah” is all he says.

They just look at each other for a minute, and Bucky’s eyes are roving around Steve’s face. Steve doesn’t know what he’s finding there. Steve doesn’t know what he’s even feeling now, can’t put words to any of the emotions in the pit of his stomach.

“Come here,” Bucky says. Steve tries to follow him, stupidly, but Bucky isn’t moving. He tugs at Steve’s shoulder until Steve’s chest is pressed against his own and he wraps his arm around Steve’s shoulders.

Steve shudders as he presses his face into Bucky’s neck. “I don’t know what to do with myself,” he admits. “What’s left to do?”

Bucky moves his hand to the back of Steve’s head, brushing through his hair like he’s always done when Steve doesn’t know which way is up. “What do you mean?” He asks.

“I’ve chased HYDRA as much as I can,” Steve says. “There’s nothing left. I don’t know what’s left. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.”

Bucky sighs. “You want me to tell you what I think you should do?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Steve says. He thought that was obvious.

“First I think you should change your clothes,” Bucky says. “I think you should eat something you didn’t find at the bottom of a drop bag. I think you should sleep for…at least twelve hours.”

“That isn’t—” Steve tries to cut in, but Bucky doesn’t let him.

“Yes it is,” he says. “I think you should be a human again, Steve. I want you to stay here and help me with these goats. Three hands are better than one,” he says wryly. “I want you to plant some tomatoes.”

“You already planted ‘em,” Steve points out.

“We can always use more tomato plants,” Bucky tells him.

“Why?” Steve asks.

“Because I like tomatoes.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, rolling his eyes a little. Bucky knows what he’s asking; he’s trying to be charming.

Bucky leans back a little so he can look into Steve’s face. He nods to himself, like he’s just confirmed a suspicion. “You’ve been running around, chasing death, killing people, burning bases. It’s guilt, huh? You think the whole goddamn world’s your fault. Well, guess what, Steve? You’re just a man. Hell of a man, sure, but still just one man. I think the future made you forget that. They made you a big hero, act like you’re an invincible machine.”

Steve moves back so Bucky isn’t touching him anymore. Bucky lets his hand drop to his side. Steve’s chest is so tight he feels like he’s having an asthma attack. These are things he doesn’t think about it. He can’t. If he wants to keep going day to day, he can’t think about this.

“I want you to slow down,” Bucky says with a shrug. “I want you to be Steve again.”

“I’m still me,” Steve tries.

Bucky shakes his head. “Not my Steve. Not yet. You’re in there. Just gotta get past the Cap bullshit to find you.”

Steve’s breathing is too loud. “Why?” He chokes out again.

“Miss you,” Bucky says quietly. He steps up close again and puts his hand on the back of Steve’s neck, gives him a gentle little squeeze that makes Steve want to sob. When was the last time someone touched him that wasn’t in a battle? When was the last time someone put their arms around him for comfort instead of to stave off death?

“I’ve missed you for years,” Steve tells him, feeling raw.

“I know,” Bucky says simply. “You told me.”

“I told you?” Steve asks, surprised. Bucky could mean Steve told him with his actions; Bucky’s been reading the deeper meaner in everything Steve does since at least the sixth grade.

“I heard you,” Bucky murmurs. “You told me just before I woke up.”

Steve can’t breathe now. “Didn’t know you heard me.”

“I heard you,” Bucky assures him softly. “But when I woke up, you took off so fast I didn’t have a chance to tell you what I thought about that.”

“Oh,” Steve says. His stomach is roiling. He doesn’t think Bucky would draw all this out if he was going to let Steve down easy, but Steve is so tired and he was alone for so long and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do if Bucky sends him off now.

“You know I love you,” Bucky says quietly. “You didn’t forget that, did you?”

Steve thinks he’s crying now. He can’t be sure. “I don’t know,” he says honestly. “Everything was so mixed up.”

Bucky nods. “Not now, though.”

“I’m still pretty mixed up,” Steve warns him.

“About this?” Bucky asks. He doesn’t even sound nervous. He knows Steve’s never been mixed up about this.

“No,” Steve says. “But I think…” He lets out a shuddering breath. “I don’t know if I know how to be your Steve anymore.”

Bucky accepts this easily. He tips Steve’s chin up and kisses him gently. “That’s okay,” he promises. “I got some experience in finding yourself.”

Steve knows he’s crying now. He kisses Bucky again, clinging to him tighter than he probably should, but Bucky’s strong and Bucky’s not complaining. Bucky leads him into the hut and sits him down on the bed.

The bright orange pot is sitting on a shelf on the opposite wall. There are blue flowers inside it now. There’s a bit of dirt spilled over the side. Steve’s chest aches when he looks at it. It’s bright. It’s happy.

The Bucky face isn’t alone. On the other side, there’s another smiley face. This one isn’t lopsided. This one has a beard. Steve knows it’s him. Bucky drew them side-by-side on his cheerful flower pot and filled it up with rich soil, with blooming flowers, with life.

Bucky lies beside Steve on the cot. He presses his lips to Steve’s forehead and strokes his hair until the anxious ache in Steve’s stomach dies down. Steve keeps his eyes on those smiling figures on the flower pot. Tomorrow, there will be work to do. Bucky will show him how to handle the goats and what to feed them, where they wander off to when they get lost. He’ll have to talk to T’Challa about how long he can stay. He needs to let Natasha know he’s here.

But now isn’t the time to worry about any of that. With Bucky’s hand in his hair and the bright colors around him, Steve closes his eyes and lets himself sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](http://biblionerd07.tumblr.com)


End file.
